The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (35 page)

Lu gave a quick curtsy, then said, "I may be a sigilord, but my power is nowhere near as strong as little bull's."

"Little bull?" Goodwyn asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You know, his namesign," said Lu, showing the namesign that Uncle Aegaz had given him. A calming warmth filled him as he watched Lu make the sign.

"And these are the radixes we freed from Almoryll when we escaped," said Urus, returning to the group.

"Autar's gone," he signed to Luse. "And I feel like we're in the middle of a slaughter box. This is an ambush."

"What do we do?" she signed back. Urus noticed Goodwyn had been following their exchanges.
 

"So you not only escaped Almoryll but you were able to take all these radixes with you?" Murin asked, incredulous. The expression on his face smoothed from surprise to appreciation and admiration. "Much has changed in the past six months."

Jols, the commander of the local soldiers introduced himself, followed by an awkward period where everyone felt compelled to shake everyone else's hand. It seemed to take forever, and Urus had no time for pleasantries. Eventually the soldiers formed a circle around Urus and his companions.

"My lord," said Choein, standing forward from his group of radixes.

"
My lord
?" said Goodwyn. "What in the hells have you been up to lately?"

While the title made him uncomfortable, and he certainly did not feel worthy of it, Urus couldn't deny that it felt pretty good to see Goodwyn caught off guard like that.

"My lord," Choein repeated, unslinging a sheathed sword from his back. "Is this man your uncle?"

"I am," said Aegaz, answering for Urus.

"Then this is for you." Choein handed Aegaz the sword. "Lord Noellor says you are a radix. Just touch the sigil and your avatar knight will appear."

"One of those glowing soldiers you all had with you?" he asked.

Choein nodded. "Lord Noellor had us take an extra sigil-etched sword from Almoryll for you, in case we found you in Kest."

"Thank you," said Aegaz, accepting the weapon, pulling it free, and studying the sigil. "Wait, you've been to Kest?"

"It's a long story, Uncle," said Urus. "But we really need to cut this reunion short. We have bigger problems to deal with."

"Ury's right," said Goodwyn. He spun in a circle, gazing out over the rooftops of the nearby buildings. "Something's coming."

"Autar was up to something," said Urus. "He's the one who encouraged us to charge blindly into the fog. He set this whole thing up, to get us all to fight each other out here in the open."

"Autar Kelus is here?" Murin asked, his face grim.

Urus nodded. "Some arbiters took a large group of radixes and came here from Almoryll. They were going to hunt down and kill a sigilord. We travelled here to save him."

"Where are the arbiters?" Timoc asked.

"We don't know," Luse replied. "We haven't seen them. We just got here early this morning."

"Autar Kelus cannot be allowed to get near those arbiters," Murin said, then turned to Urus. "You should have killed him when you had a chance."

"Why would we kill a sigilord?" Urus asked.

Choein stepped forward. "We would never harm a sigilord."

Murin paced back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back. Goodwyn still seemed entranced by whatever his quiver vision was showing him, his eyes focused on distant points in the sky.

"This reunion is all well and good, but have we forgotten that we are still searching for my daughter?" said Commander Jols.

"That search may have to wait," said Goodwyn, still lost in his vision, turning his head and scanning the streets.

"We need to prepare for an ambush," Urus said.

"Findanar is abandoned," said the girl named Owl. "There's no one here to ambush us."

As if in reply to counter her statement, a volley of arrows appeared in the sky, landing just short of the group in a nearby pile of debris.

Chapter Twenty-Three

"Tie her up near the fire," Anderis said, pointing to a large fireplace that hosted a heavy black kettle. "Put her servant in the other room."

Anderis's lackeys each held an arm under her armpit as they pulled Cailix across the room, her limp feet dragging on the cold stone floor. After they bound her hands and ankles, then secured her to an iron ring in the floor, one of the men gave her a parting kick in the stomach before leaving to secure Colin in an adjoining room.

I can't wait to kill him,
Cailix thought. But the truth was she would likely never get the chance. She was dying. Anderis had called it
the corruption
, and it had something to do with using dead blood. It was her own fault.

After all that work,
she thought.
All that time spent gaining power, and I am going to die curled up on the floor in the basement of some dunghole abandoned building. I'm going to die weak and helpless.

It wasn't really the thought of dying that bothered her, it was the way it was going to happen. She couldn't bear the idea of helplessness; the thought chilled her far more than the winter damp.

With her hands and feet bound, she had to inchworm and wiggle her way closer to the fire. Moving just those few inches exhausted her and left her as breathless as if she had just sprinted across the fields near her home on Aldsdowne.

Home
.
What a joke. There is no such thing. There is only where you stay until something terrible happens and you have to move.
 

The light of the fire gave her a chance to look at her hands and arms. They had taken all of her warm clothes and cloak. Her skin seemed almost translucent; she could see right through it to the blood vessels below. But instead of the colors she expected, her veins were as black as tar.

Not satisfied with just seeing, she bit into her finger enough to draw blood—if what came out could even be considered blood. A black ichor rose from the pinprick hole in her skin, but it just stayed there, as though her blood were so thick it couldn't squeeze through the hole.

Of all the lessons I could have missed from him, why did it have to be this one?
Had she known about the price to be paid for using old blood, she would have found a different way to fight Anderis in Aldsdowne.

Thinking of that day, of how she had failed Miss Orla and failed to kill Anderis, a single tear formed in her eye, a tear that dried up before it could run down her cheek.

"Do sit up, Aerlissa," Anderis crooned, taking a seat in a torn and stained chair on the other side of the room. "We have guests coming."

Anderis's men returned with mugs of a black steaming brew that smelled like the putrid concoction the briene foreman had favored and handed one to the blood mage. She had lost her appetite the day before, despite the need for soup, but she was so ill she would take anything, even the dark briene brew.

Coughing, her lungs wracked with pain, she managed to wobble back and forth to build up enough momentum to roll up and lean her back against the wall. The warmth radiating from the stone was blissful, and she longed for sleep. At this point, she didn't care if that sleep was eternal. She was just so tired.

"I will never forgive you for denying me a true victory," said Anderis, taking a sip of his drink. "I will have to settle for watching you suffer in agony until you finally die. Your organs are going to fail, one by one, once they become unable to deal with the changes to your blood. You're going to turn yellow, and the most foul liquids will ooze from every pore and orifice on your body."

"I'm still going to kill you before I die," she mumbled.

"It makes me proud to see you haven't lost your inner fire, Aerlissa."

"My name is…" Cailix began, but her voice trailed off as sleep fought to take hold.

"Get her some food and some mead," Anderis ordered his men. "We can't have her die of starvation and rob me of the pleasure of seeing the corruption take its full course."

The men she was going to kill disappeared and returned with a hot meat pie and a mug of hot mead. The smell of the cinnamon stick steeping in the hot water was heavenly.
 

A full stick of cinnamon
, Cailix thought.
For a prisoner. He always did like flaunting his wealth and power.
 

Cailix knew enough about the cities in the northern part of the world to know that cinnamon was more rare than gold, and used sparingly even by royalty. No one would ever give a stick of it to a dying girl. No one but Anderis.

As she used the last of her strength to bite into the meat pie, a burst of yellow light flared throughout the chamber, forcing her to close her eyes. When she opened them again, Anderis's guest had arrived. He was a tall, somewhat older-looking man who wore a grey helmet with some kind of glass visor over his eyes. A sword on his back, heavy armor, and the way he carried himself marked him as a seasoned warrior. The armor, though, looked like a weave of different-colored black fibers. She had only seen it once before.

The people who took Urus wore that armor
, she thought. The man had appeared out of thin air, something she had only seen Urus do once before, when he had arrived, near death, on the beach after defeating Draegon.
This man is a sigilord!

"Autar," said Anderis with a barely detectable nod.

"Blood mage," replied the sigilord.

"You wound me," replied Anderis, clutching at his heart. "I thought we were at least on a first name basis by now."

"With a wave of my hand I could cast your worthless carcass into the abyss and there would not be a soul alive who would miss you," Autar said, his deep voice growling with the effort of containing his anger. Cailix knew that anger well. Anderis could bring out the worst in anyone. "You are a genocidal maniac."

"I've so missed your cheerful tone, Autar," said Anderis. "But we have business to attend to. Do you have the returning rod?"

Returning rod?
Cailix wondered what it was. More importantly, she knew that if these two wanted it, she had to keep it from them.

"No," Autar rumbled, compressing his large form enough to sit in the small chair across from Anderis. "I have not located the arbiters yet. But when I do, I will skin the arbiters alive and feed their insides to the bile wolves. I can keep them alive long enough so they can watch the beasts consume their worthless hearts."

Autar turned toward the fireplace, finally acknowledging that they were not alone. He stared so deeply into Cailix's eyes, it felt as though he were probing her innermost thoughts. Unable to bear his gaze, she turned away and stared into the fire.

"Who is your pet?" Autar asked.

"That is my daughter."
 

Cailix was shocked that Anderis would admit such a thing to anyone. "She has the corruption. By my best reckoning, I have about a week to enjoy her suffering before she finally succumbs."

"And people wonder why blood mages had such a terrible reputation," Autar commented. "You are a sick man."

Anderis gave a short laugh. "And you're not? You, of all people, have no grounds to declare moral superiority. You and I are the same. Now, to business."

"As I said," Autar replied. "I am still waiting for the arbiters. I did, however, get confirmation that they are here. They assembled a radix strike team to come and kill me, exactly as I planned."

"How did you get confirmation if you have not found them?"

"A couple of sigilords and a handful of radixes escaped from Almoryll," Autar said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I left them in an ambush south of here. My wolves are hungry and need some sport before the real offensive."

Anderis jumped up out of his seat and kicked over the table. He threw his mug against the wall, shattering it into a dozen pieces.
 

"You let two sigilords live!" Anderis shouted, so enraged he could barely speak clearly. "How dare you! You should have killed them on the spot."

"Mind your temper, blood mage," Autar said. "It was just a couple of children and a dozen radix slaves from the castle. I sent them off to fight some local soldiers. They might be dead even before the trap is sprung."

Anderis paced, still furious. "The arbiters were in possession of a very special sigilord, Autar. A
blue
sigilord. A young, dark-skinned man. He would have been short, but built like a fortress."

Autar nodded. "Yes, the dark-skinned man was with them, and a girl—Luse I think."

Urus! Urus is a blue sigilord, and he's here!
Cailix turned from the fire to study Autar.

Anderis threw up his hands. "You have no idea what you've done."

"Patience, blood mage. You are mistaken. The sigilords are all but extinct, and the last known case of ceruleanism was millennia ago—and that baby was killed at birth."

They killed a baby for being a blue sigilord?
Cailix thought.
What barbarians!

"I tell you, I have seen this boy's power. He is the one who defeated Draegon."

"Good for him," said Autar. "I wish I could have seen that. But you have nothing to fear. No sigilord, cerulean or otherwise, can defeat what I left for them in those streets. The people of this realm have no defense against my minions. I suspect the whole group is already dead and feeding my wolves."